State aims to reduce landfill waste by 80 percent

This spring, state environmental leaders hope to wrap up a major plan, almost three years in the making, to cut the amount of trash dumped in landfills by nearly a third by the end of the decade and an ambitious 80 percent by 2050.

This spring, state environmental leaders hope to wrap up a major plan, almost three years in the making, to cut the amount of trash dumped in landfills by nearly a third by the end of the decade and an ambitious 80 percent by 2050.

Most controversially, the plan would relax a longtime moratorium on new trash incinerators and require some commercial food waste to be diverted from landfills next year. It also aims to step up recycling by businesses and residents at the local level and ensure that fewer toxic materials and other banned materials end up in the waste stream.

Overall, the plan, which is called, “Pathway to Zero Waste,” is meant to cut greenhouse gas emissions from trash disposal and processing and ease pressure on the state’s landfills.

“As a whole, we’re reiterating our strong support for recycling and reuse,” said state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Kenneth Kimmell.

The state’s proposal has been a long time coming. The state recycled about 42 percent of all its waste as of 2009 — one of the highest rates in the nation, but one that did not improve over the last decade, the plan says.

DEP released a draft of its plan in 2010 and received 121 public comments. The agency did not release a revised draft until December last year. Kimmell said his staff “wanted to make sure we got it right, and it did take some time.”

The new version has a key change: A proposed revision to a 23-year-old ban on expanding municipal waste incineration. The plan says it would allow limited use of new or alternative technology to turn 350,000 tons of waste, or less than 5 percent of all trash, into fuel each year.

“Part of it is to be open to technological innovation,” Kimmell said. “The second part of it is we are facing a capacity shortfall.”

The alternative-technology fuel aspect of possible changes to the state’s Solid Waste Master Plan holds particular relevance for Taunton, whose municipal landfill is slated to close by March 2015.

In December 2012, Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr.’s administration signed a contract with a pair of waste-treatment firms, as part of a unique agreement between the two competitors to share in the profits of ridding the city of its municipal solid waste stream.

One of the two, Interstate Waste Technologies, is seeking MassDEP approval to build a gasification plant that would produce saleable gasoline as a byproduct.

IWT, which previously was anointed by the city as its “preferred vendor,” has agreed to work with WeCare Organics LLC, a New York state-based company with a proven track record for managing waste-disposal plants, including all four of New York City’s trash-processing sites.

But even if IWT passes muster with the state’s environmental overseers, it still has one major problem: The 350,000-ton trash limit as a fuel source for the entire state is considerably less than what IWT says it has to process in order to turn a profit.

Page 2 of 3 - Taunton City Councilman Daniel Barbour, chairman of the solid waste committee, said it’s ironic that the current version of Pathway to Zero Waste is stipulating a tonnage limit that falls far short of IWT’s needs.

“They’ll need at least 500,000 tons,” per year, Barbour said.

He did, however, say that IWT is now appealing to the state to loosen its proposed alternative technology, trash-source limit.

Barbour says he sat down with MassDEP officials in late February at their Lakeville office.

Although the mayor was unable to attend, Barbour said that besides himself those who did show up included fellow councilor Deborah Carr, DPW water division director Cathal O’Brien, IWT president Frank Campbell and his lawyer, former Taunton mayor and state rep Theodore Aleixo.

Barbour says MassDEP officials showed interest in coming to Taunton within a month to visit the spot where IWT wants to build its gasoline production plant.

That site, adjacent to Myles Standish Industrial Park, includes part of the Alec Rich site, as well as land owned by G. Lopes Construction.

Barbour also stressed that he remains skeptical about details of the Pathway to Zero Waste plan. “I’ll believe it when I see it in writing,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of talk over the years, and to date we have no plan in hand.”

Depending on the success of its new efforts to reduce waste, the state is expected to be short on landfill space for between 700,000 and 2 million tons of trash a year by 2020, Kimmell said. While Massachusetts already has to ship some of its waste out of state, an option that may not remain cost effective, the commissioner said.

The proposed change sparked resistance. By a March 1 deadline to weigh in on the incineration proposal, 5,030 people and organizations submitted comments electronically, according to Ed Coletta, a DEP spokesman. Don’t Waste Massachusetts, a coalition against the proposed changes, said it delivered more than 10,000 signatures in opposition to the change on Feb. 28.

The coalition argues expanded burning is inefficient and dirty, and the pyrolysis and gasification technology DEP favors is neither new nor successful elsewhere in the U.S.

Advocates argue DEP needs to focus more on enforcing existing bans on dumping recyclables, yard waste and other materials already barred from landfills. Estimates say at least 15 percent of trash that ends up in landfills should not be there, said Janet Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, which helped lead the petition drive.

“It’s contradictory to include new sources of combustion if you haven’t done every single thing that you can to reduce, reuse, recycle,” she said.

Kimmell said increased enforcement is part of DEP’s plan, but it is “very time-consuming and labor intensive,” and may not ultimately address the landfill space crunch.

Page 3 of 3 - Industries that burn trash to generate power support the state’s proposal. In written comments, Covanta Energy, which runs waste-to-energy facilities in Rochester, Haverhill, Pittsfield and Agawam, said the proposal is a step in the right direction and a better option than expanding landfills. However, the company does not want limits on technology allowed at any new incinerators.

The state has seven municipal waste incinerators now, including ones in North Andover, Saugus and Millbury.

In another highlight of the plan, the state wants to foster a new market for turning food and other organic waste into compost or using it for energy, with hopes of diverting about a third of this type of garbage from landfills by the end of the decade.

DEP overhauled siting rules for facilities known as anaerobic digesters that can process this type of waste last year. To meet its goals, the state would need eight to 10 such facilities to process 100 tons of food waste per day.

A farm in Rutland has a facility that already does this with food and manure, and about 200 large supermarkets already are part of a program to reuse or recycle food waste, the proposal says. DEP also is looking to develop pilot digesters on state land and has narrowed its options to UMass-Amherst, MCI-Shirley and MCI-Norfolk, according to Kimmell.

In the shorter term, the state has plans to bar hotels, conference centers and other large businesses and institutions from tossing food into the regular trash next year.

“We think that will send the right signal to the private sector that they can invest capital and build these facilities,” Kimmell said.

Domenitz backs that idea.

“Number one, you free up (landfill) space,” she said. “Number two, when food is buried, it actually releases bad gases. ... Number three, you can turn it into something useful.”